An Absurd Rite of Passage – Ta-Nehisi Coates – National – The Atlantic.
I wanted to make sure I linked to this excellent op-ed from a young black man, experiencing what all too many of us learn to basically tolerate in New York.
Related Posts
Free Speech
This is why I love the internets. Hypocrisy is so easy to find. For the record, I think censorship is too blunt a tool to be effective in dealing with disagreeable ideas. Technorati Tags: free speech
Kerry on the Middle East
Via a link on Loose Democracy, I found this article by Sen. John Kerry on his vision of the relationship of the US to Israel. It is not, in my mind, a commitment to reforming the Middle East. First, I find it problematic for Sen. Kerry to define America’s interest as the same as Israel’s interest. I do agree that Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia pose various threats to the US, but they are threats to the US; the challenges to Israel, European countries, Russia, etc., are different. By equating America’s and Israel’s interests, it makes it harder to…
(Un)Created(?) – Quran Desecration, part 2
A question for the Muslim community: why we are offended when the Qur’an is desecrated? (See previous post for details.) Echoing the grand debate most associated with the Mutazilah, the Qur’an is either created, or uncreated. If it is uncreated, then that means the Qur’an is co-eternal with God, meaning that something else exists with God. So, as a second “eternal,” I can understand why Muslims would be upset; of course, it also means that they are only superficially believers in tawhid. To be offended, is to deny what it means to be Muslim. If you argue that the Qur’an…